The world’s greatest musical composition, Beethoven’s Symphony Number Nine, “The Choral” (1824) was composed when Beethoven, the genius was totally deaf. As the often beleaguered Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770 -1827) once exclaimed, “A few fly-bites cannot stop a spirited horse!”

Credited with creating a whole new genre of classical music, known as “Romantic”, his handsome, but arrogant father attempted to have him become like his contemporary, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Instead, he became the greatest music composer the world has ever known, with his greatest works created when he was totally deaf.

His dynamic and powerful music met with immediate success. Right after his first work, Three Piano Trios won him much fame, he became ever increasingly deaf. The tormented music genius contemplated suicide, but he was overtaken by a sudden urge to live. He wrote to a friend about that moment, “I shall seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely”.

Facts are that after becoming totally antisocial and totally deaf, he went ahead and conducted the premier of his Ninth Symphony. It is recorded that the anguished man turned around to bow to the audience, to see that they were giving him a standing thunderous ovation of long duration. He wept from the experience.

During a severe thunderstorm on March 26, 1827, a friend witnessed Ludwig Van Beethoven raise his right arm with a defiant fist to the heavens from his deathbed window. Then, at only 57, the defiant piano virtuoso and music composer left us with the greatest music in history, incuding the best ever, The Ninth Symphony…not bad for a deaf man.

Citing: “Beethoven-Piano Music”, Anonymous, 2011, Piano Street, http://www.pianostreet.com/beethoven-sheet-music/